Amazon has announced that it’s new electric vans, made by Rivian, will be delivering parcels to more than 100 U.S. cities this Christmas. It started rolling out the vehicles to places like Chicago, Seattle, and St. Louis in the summer, but will now use a fleet of more than 1,000 vans in over 100 U.S. cities.
Some of the new cities that the vans are coming to include Austin, Boston, Denver, Houston, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Madison, Newark, New York, Oakland, Pittsburgh, Portland, Provo, and Salt Lake City. While this is a significant expansion since the summer, Amazon ultimately plans to have 100,000 of these vehicles on roads by 2030.
Udit Madan, VP of Amazon Transportation, said:
“We’re always excited for the holiday season, but making deliveries to customers across the country with our new zero-emission vehicles for the first time makes this year unique. We’ve already delivered over 5 million packages with our vehicles produced by Rivian, and this is still just the beginning—that figure will grow exponentially as we continue to make progress toward our 100,000-vehicle goal.”
As a big contributor to delivery-based emissions, Amazon’s switch to electric vans should be significant. The company previously set out an initiative called The Climate Pledge where it has agreed to be net-zero carbon by 2040, a whole decade before the 2050 deadline set by the Paris Agreement in 2015.